They plan on completing at least 30 surgeries for a hospital in Patzun, Guatemala
A group of doctors and nurses from Saskatchewan are planning a medical mission to Guatemala.
From February 13 to February 21, the surgical team will travel to Patzún, Guatemala and work at Clinica Corpus Christi, a small hospital and orphanage.
Jackie Wilson, a surgical nurse from Moose Jaw, has been organizing the trip and assembling the medical crew from Moose Jaw and Regina.
Wilson has always wanted to help those less fortunate, it is one of the reasons she became a nurse.
“I wanted to work on Mercy Ships and just be able to do humanitarian stuff with it,” Wilson said, referencing hospital ships which deliver free health care to those without access in the developing world.
By the time she finished her nursing degree, she was married and planned on having kids.
“Now that my kids are little bit older, I finally feel I have the opportunity to maybe go and do it for a little bit,” Wilson said.
She planned a medical mission to Burkina Faso in 2014, but her team never made it to the West African country because of the Ebola outbreak.
“We didn’t go because we would have had to deal with quarantine when we [got] back,” she said.
After canceling the trip, Wilson received a phone call from a man in Guatemala who heard about their mission and suggested towns that would need medical help.
In the end, she decided to send the team to the municipality of Patzún, where a 24-bed hospital run by nuns needed a surgeon.
“They have a functioning [operating room], but they don’t have a surgeon there,” Wilson said.
“They keep a running tally of patients that they think could use surgeries that could help benefit them, but they don’t really have a way of making it happen.”
Wilson said she is hoping the team is able to perform at least 30 surgeries and expects most of them will be hernia repairs and gall bladder removals.
They will examine each patient and determine whether they are healthy enough for surgery.
“Guatemala has a really big disparity between the rich and poor there. So the people that we will be doing surgeries on will be the poorest of the poor,” Wilson said.
“They are in extreme poverty there, so they don’t have the opportunity for [surgery]. If nobody goes there, they won’t be able to go to a bigger centre to be able to have it done.”
The team wants to reimburse the hospital for supplies, anaesthetics, and medication. They are also planning on bringing surgical equipment and sterile supplies which are not available in Guatemala.
“We are desperately trying to get enough funds together to pay for our expenses,” Wilson said.
Wilson and the medical team are fundraising to help finance the cost of the equipment and supplies needed for their Guatemalan patients. There is a GoFundMe set up to help raise funds.
Source: cbc.ca
